The Waitangi Tribunal and New Zealand History

Abstract

The Waitangi Tribunal and New Zealand History, by Giselle Byrnes (Oxford: Oxford U.P., 2004; pp. 222. £26.99). This scholarly and closely-argued analysis of the history produced by the research and reports of the Waitangi Tribunal will be of interest to students of ‘postcolonialism’ and the aborigines' rights movements in North America, Australia and elsewhere. In New Zealand, public debate has been sharpened by its conclusion that the Tribunal set up in 1975 to determine the validity of Maori compensation for loss of lands and other rights contrary to the terms of the 1840 Treaty has been ‘a noble, but ultimately flawed experiment’ (p. 199). The reasons adduced are many and derive from the purpose of ‘advocacy history’—namely to establish Crown culpability in the past and the need for remedies to compensate tribal and sub-tribal claimants in the present. By selecting evidence to support those claims, the Tribunal is writing,...